page_title: Religion in the United Kingdom
section_title: Sikhism
hierarchical_section_title: Religion in the United Kingdom / Sikhism
context_page_description: Religion in the United Kingdom, and in the countries that preceded it, has been dominated for over 1,000 years by various forms of Christianity. Religious affiliations of United Kingdom citizens are recorded by regular surveys, the four major ones being the national decennial census, the Labour Force Survey, the British Social Attitudes survey and the European Social Survey.
  According to the 2011 Census, Christianity is the majority religion, followed by Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism in terms of number of adherents. Among Christians, Anglicans are the most common denomination, followed by the Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. This, and the relatively large number of individuals with nominal or no religious affiliations, has led commentators to variously describe the United Kingdom as a post-Christian, multi-faith and secularised society.
  The United Kingdom was formed by the union of previously independent countries in 1707, and consequently most of the largest religious groups do not have UK-wide organisational structures.
context_section_description: There are 432,429 Sikhs in the United Kingdom constituting 0.7% of the population, according to the 2011 Census. While England is home to the majority of Sikhs in the United Kingdom, small communities also exist in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
  The first recorded Sikh settler in the United Kingdom was Maharaja Duleep Singh, dethroned and exiled in 1849 at the age of 14, after the Anglo-Sikh wars. During the reign of King Edward VII the first Sikh society in the UK was founded in 1908, it was called The Khalsa Jatha. 
  The first Sikh Gurdwara (temple) was established in 1911, in Shepherds Bush, Putney, London. The first wave of Sikh migration came in the 1940s, mostly of men from the Punjab seeking work in industries such as foundries and textiles. These new arrivals mostly settled in London, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, the Midlands and West Yorkshire. Thousands of Sikhs from East Africa followed later.
caption: Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Southall, UK
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